Judging from my facebook page, the Ghana-Uruguay match aroused a lot of strong sentiment among people who had never previously been deeply invested in narratives of Uruguayan perfidy and Ghanian virtue. The match’s ending is interesting because it went down more or less like this:
For those of you who didn’t watch the match, in the 120th minute, literally the last few seconds of the 30 minutes of extra time in the match, Ghana had a series of shots on goal, three if memory serves me correctly (and it seldom does). The first two shots were parried by the Uruguayan keeper and a defender on the line, legitimately. The third, a header, was deliberately punched away — by Luis Suarez, a Uruguayan striker. In other words, one of the ten guys in blue and black who technically can not touch the ball with his hands. Unlike the 2002 Quarter Final match between the USA and Germany, the ref spotted the foul, red carded Suarez, and awarded Ghana a penalty.
It was a smart move by Suarez, in a sense. No hand foul, and Uruguay loses; foul, and Ghana gets a penalty kick that might, and did, go astray. But a lot of people seem bent out of shape about it because Suarez deliberately violated the rule for strategic advantage and that seems wrong, or unseemly, or bad in some other way.
Brockington reasons this way. Suarez did not cheat because:
He did the rational thing. It was perhaps not the sporting, moral, or ethical choice, and definitely the cynical choice, but given the nature of the match, he made the correct decision.
This is sloppy, but it gets us into an interesting (and longstanding) debate in the philosophy of sport. First the sloppiness. That the act was rational doesn’t rule out the act being an instance of cheating. James Bond might need to cheat at cards to defeat the evil villain; his cheating is rationally and morally justified while still being an act of cheating. The interesting issue is what to make of intentional rule violations.
The most obvious pro-Suarez view is to say that penalties are like a tax or fine: we tell you in advance that if you do such-and-such, there will be a cost, and it’s up to you to decide what to do in light of these incentives. Suarez judged that the benefit of the handball exceeded its cost, he paid the price for increased handball emissions, and off he went. (Another clear example of strategic fouling is the Hack-a-Shaq.)
Against that view, we might try to argue that there’s some ethos violated by the strategic violation– a moral violation (because the foul violates an implicit contract between players) or a violation of sportsmanship (because violations are contrary to the spirit of the game). This would help explain why there’s so much opprobrium directed at Suarez.
But how to make this work? Hard to say in detail here. One interesting idea comes from CR Torres[1] via Warren P. Fraleigh.[2] Roughly, the idea rests on the distinction between constitutive skills and restorative skills. CS “define and shape the character of games. They exist to bring games to life and, in terms of such skills, players are to show their superiority” (Torres: 86). RS, on the other hand, are those involved in penalties that restore balance after rule violations. The regulative rules of a game establish regulative skills because they
prescribe precise penalties and methods for re-establishing the lusory project, but in doing so they generate additional skills that are employed during what may be labeled the regulative phase of the game, the period during which an interruption occurs and a need arises to put the game back on track. (Torres: 85)
Constitutive skills include dribbling, passing, shooting, etc., while restorative skills are things like free throws, corner kicks, and so on.
Fraleigh notes that there’s an important difference between constitutive and restorative skills. Restorative skills
are, indeed, part of the game, but their significance is derivative. They come into being when the central lusory project has been interrupted. Although they are part of the game their importance is not necessarily in the same way that constitutive skills are. (Fraleigh: 171)
The problem of some tactical fouling, in Fraleigh’s view, is that it shifts the game’s emphasis from constitutive to restorative skills and thus undermines the nature of the sport. For example, he says, of the intentional handball in soccer, that it “substitutes a prohibited skill for a constitutive skill and, thus, changes the central test of the sport” (Fraleigh: 174). This seems plausible insofar as it helps us understand our reactions of unfairness to the use of rule violations to tactical advantage: the acts are gaming the system but in doing so they undermine the true test of sport.
[1] Torres, CR. “What counts as part of a game? A look at skills.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport XXVII, 2000, 81-92.
[2] Fraleigh, WP. “Intentional rules violations– one more time.” Journal of the Philosophy of Sport XXX, 2003, 166-176.
32 comments
July 3, 2010 at 12:34 pm
dana
Here are two ways we can look at the rule “don’t use your hands” and the penalty for breaking it.
-A player may use his hands, but it will cost him a red card if he does. (This is the tax view.)
-A player may not use his hands, and if he does, he’ll be punished by earning a red card. (This is the shoplifting view.)
Whether Suarez cheated seems to turn on how the rule is understood. I’m inclined to think it’s understood in the second way, if only because it seems that there are other rules, like those that govern substitutions, which seem to be in the tax-view category and which seem to be different from the rule not to use your hands.
July 3, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Mr Punch
No, I don’t think so. Basketball, a widely played, popular game, makes extensive use of strategic fouling, without any of the reactions described. I suspect that the real issue here is that football is far too dependent on referees’ calls (largely because goals are so rare), and that playing the refs instead of the other team exposes this weakness.
July 3, 2010 at 3:37 pm
SeanH
@dana: The Laws of the Game themselves seem to take the latter view, as somebody in the LGM comments mentions:
July 3, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Anderson
SeanH is right, I think, and the objection seems to be that the penalty is disproportionate to the crime.
A penalty for bank robbery that leaves me still calculating the pros and cons, seems like an insufficient penalty.
Deliberately preventing a goal should net, like, *3* penalty kicks. Something severe enough that Suarez would’ve been doing his damnedest *not* to handle the ball as it soared to the goal.
(Now, sure, 100% chance of game-ending goal vs. .00001% chance of missing 3 penalty kicks may arguably favor taking the penalty anyway. In real life, however, the odds would not seem worth it. And when is it *certain* a ball will go in, anyway? Hell, there was probably a significant chance the dumbass ref would’ve called the ball not a goal after it clearly went in.)
July 3, 2010 at 4:53 pm
SeanH
To take a side: I agree that the problem is that the penalty is insufficiently draconian. I disagree that, as some at LGM seem to hold, this means that “you can’t blame Suarez for doing what he did” or even “Suarez was right to act as he did”. Just because people will break the rules, doesn’t mean they ought to.
July 3, 2010 at 5:21 pm
ben
Huh, weird; this just came up at unfogged too. I swear I hadn’t seen this post or dana’s comment when I made a shoplifting analogy there.
July 3, 2010 at 5:21 pm
kid bitzer
i seem to recall that descartes had some harsh words about suarez’ casuistry.
July 3, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Erik Lund
Was it Descartes, or Pascal, or both, kid? I’m betting it was Pascal.
July 3, 2010 at 7:36 pm
dana
Huh. I hadn’t read the Unfogged comments. Great minds think alike, ben?
Kid, I can’t come up with a suitable Suarez pun.
July 3, 2010 at 7:38 pm
jazzbumpa
The penalty should be to count the goal, plus allow 3 penalty kicks, plus a red card to the offender.
Uruguay won specifically and exactly because Suarez cheated. The tax or the fine needs to be sufficient to act as a deterrent, since mere enforcement obviously fails.
The strategic fouling in basketball strikes me as a structural flaw in the game. Not that I have a solution to offer.
But if deliberately violating he rules so routinely leads to an advantage the violator would not otherwise have, then the game becomes too much like the real world and not enough like sport.
Which, come to think of it, is why I’ve hated the Filadelfya Phliers for 35 years.
Cheers!
JzB
July 3, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Ben Alpers
I don’t think the constitutive/restorative division is very helpful in establishing what bothers people about Suarez’s handball.
After all, in soccer there are all kinds of situations in which players uncontroversially shift the game to restorative mode, e.g. when defenders kick the ball out of bounds to stop the flow of a (constitutive) attack, thus setting up a (restorative) throw-in or corner for the other team.
As other commentators have pointed out, in the case of Suarez’s handball, the punishment seems disproportionately small (especially now that FIFA has said that Suarez can play in the final if Uruguay beats the Netherlands).
There’s also a question of the culture of the game. Structural flaw or not, strategic fouling is simply part of the way basketball is played. Deliberate handballs are not part of the culture of soccer (as a number of people have pointed out elsewhere, note how the Paraguayan defender standing in the goal last night as David Villa’s shot bounced off the bar for Spain’s 1-0 victory never lifts his arms to grab for the ball).
July 4, 2010 at 3:42 am
SeanH
There is probably no in-game penalty (since “allowing the goal” will probably never happen) strong enough to discourage cheats like Suarez’s, given that Ghana certainly would have won had Suarez not cheated. I think the penalty should involve a team ban. Do it in an international match, and you’re banned from international play for X months.
July 4, 2010 at 4:48 am
NM
Interesting points.
I think the “culture of the game” point is important to understanding the difference in reactions. (Hack-a-shaq did prompt a few official considerations of a rules change, but there the problem was the game was no fun to watch, more than an action that was poor form or whatever.) And the game-culture context has a lot to do with whether the infractions are more like strategic moves that come with a cost or whether they’re wrong, unsporting, etc. Maybe the only way to explicate the difference has to rely on what other players have a right to expect given prevailing norms.
July 4, 2010 at 4:49 am
jim
There’s also a question of the culture of the game.
But the culture of the game includes deliberate violation of the rules. There is even a term for it: “professional foul.”
It cannot have escaped attention that officiating in this World Cup has not been good. Even at the highest levels of the game, the exercise of authority within the game is arbitrary and capricious. This is true to some extent of all sports, of course (“Is it a ball or a strike?” “It isn’t anything until I call it.”), but it is most marked in soccer: if the ref doesn’t see the ball cross the goal line, no goal has been scored. A possible ethical reaction to the arbitrary and capricious exercise of authority is to take it upon oneself to judge appropriate standards of behaviour.
There is a television play by Tom Stoppard (from the 1980s, if I remember correctly) which explores this. Some British philosophers visit Prague for a conference at the same time as a World Cup qualifying match is being held. One of the philosophers, witnessing the treatment by the regime of one of his former students, a signer of Charter77, is moved, at the end of the play, to commit his own professional foul.
While this thought probably belongs in the other thread, I have wondered if the capricious exercise of authority in soccer is a feature rather than a bug. Most of the countries in which soccer is most popular are either now dictatorships or have recently been. It may be that to see capriciousness on the field has a somewhat cathartic effect and to oppose it on the field relieves some tension that arises from being unable to oppose it in the streets. Certainly support of Spartak against Dinamo in the ’30s and ’40s seems to have functioned as symbolic (and therefore harmless) opposition to the regime — not that that kept the Chairman of Spartak from being arrested.
July 4, 2010 at 5:23 am
John
There is probably no in-game penalty (since “allowing the goal” will probably never happen)
Why not? Basketball, hockey, and even American football all have situations where points/goals not scored are automatically awarded when certain kinds of rule-breaking occur.
July 4, 2010 at 6:27 am
SeanH
@John: I’m not directly familiar with any of those examples, so please correct me if my second-hand knowledge is wrong, but my impression is that a goal in soccer is “worth” a lot more than points/goals are in basketball, hockey and American football. One goal in soccer is very very likely to decide the game. On the other hand, that would do the job of discouraging handballs…
July 4, 2010 at 6:27 am
anon
I love and follow rugby and in the sport there is what is called a professional foul. In short, if a player commits any intentional foul to spoil the play he is automatically sent off for at least 15min(yellow) or potentially for the rest of the game(red) also if it was clearly done to prevent the opposing team from scoring the opposing team is awarded the points without having to score(called a penalty try/goal). This could be even for miner infractions like: pretending to slip in the scrum near your goal line, or even playing offside near your goal line.
Soccer football allows for far too many spoiling tactics and FIFA’s inability to change the laws to always reward positive play and severely punish negative play ensures I only watch it during the world cup.
July 4, 2010 at 6:40 am
Chris
Peter Singer’s written about exactly this topic recently. As usual, he’s pretty insightful:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/singer64/English
July 4, 2010 at 9:35 am
NM
Hmm, he seems to avoid the interesting questions in that piece. This is an interesting anecdote:
I’m reminded of golfers who have called penalties on themselves after, e.g., grounding a clubhead in a hazard. Culture of the game, etc.
July 4, 2010 at 10:33 am
Simon
Football is a game, right? Suarez did something to try and win the game, outside the rules, got punished but it paid off.
Melo stamps on Robben’s leg with his cleats, gets sent off, no one gives a damn. Football is a game, folks, who is worse? Suarez or Melo? And yet people are talking about banning Uruguay for a year, banning the team, changing the rules so Ghana gets three kicks instead of one, etc. I don’t hear any of that about Brazil. If my son did what Suarez did I’d be a lot less upset than if he imitated Melo.
You know what I like about how the rule stands now? Ghana has to win it. Why? Because it’s a goddam game!
And just as a little note, the piety coming out of the Ghana side right now rings pretty false. I saw them play Nigeria in the African Cup quarterfinals two years ago — a Nigerian player was on the ground behind the ref, and a Ghanian ran up and jabbed him in the eye with two fingers. The Nigerian screamed, the ref turned around, and the Ghanian player flung himself backwards into space and writhed in agony.
But you’re right, Suarez has violated a game that was virginal until last night. Why should Ghana actually have to make a penalty kick?
July 4, 2010 at 10:48 am
Simon
My last comment was needlessly combative — I’m sorry, I’ve been studying alone in Basel for 4 weeks, and am starved for argument.
July 4, 2010 at 10:59 am
SeanH
Melo stamps on Robben’s leg with his cleats, gets sent off, no one gives a damn. Football is a game, folks, who is worse? Suarez or Melo? And yet people are talking about banning Uruguay for a year, banning the team, changing the rules so Ghana gets three kicks instead of one, etc. I don’t hear any of that about Brazil.
The fact that Melo is clearly worse (since assault, by any reasonable measure, is worse than cheating to win a football match) is exactly why you don’t hear so many people complaining about Melo’s conduct. Firstly, because nobody is arguing that Melo was right to do what he did, made a tough choice for his team, did the grown-up thing etc. Since there is no opposition, there is no need to keep asserting that Melo was worse.
Secondly, in Melo’s case the system worked. Melo’s stamping didn’t work out better for him. If Brazil had won as a direct result of what Melo did, you’d be hearing a lot more about how bad it was.
But you’re right, Suarez has violated a game that was virginal until last night. Why should Ghana actually have to make a penalty kick?
Ghana already made a shot on goal that Uruguay were unable to stop by legal means. Why should Uruguay get another chance?
July 4, 2010 at 11:19 am
Simon
I see your arguments, but I disagree with them . . . Firstly, I hear a lot of people arguing that Suarez needs more, or maybe the Uruguayan team shouldn’t be back for a while, or things of that nature. No one is saying that about Melo. It’s not because he was punished, it’s because people care more about victory than they do about violence.
Uruguay gets another chance because it’s a game — and football is a game where you only get a point when you put the ball in the net. It’s not a game where you get a point for hitting someone’s flapping hand in front of the goal. Why? I think it’s because it’s exciting to see players trying to score, not argue whether a handball was intentional or unintentional.
The end of the game was great to watch, the tension was unbelievable. Games are about watching and playing — but you seem to think that they’re about winning. They are, in a way, but are much more about trying and failing. You care so much about victory, and not football, that you would change the game so that now a goal comes from getting the ball in the net, AND hitting a flapping hand in front of the goal. I just don’t care about seeing that latter, I like the ball in the net and a penalty with a striker against a goalie.
It seems to me that what you’re demanding is a situation where an individual, or a team can NEVER derive a benefit from breaking a rule. If they do, the rule must change. How would you deal with the following?
A man, say a German player, takes an obvious dive in the penalty area and tricks the idiot ref into giving him a penalty. It’s the World Cup Final and Germany wins! Ugh. Replays make everyone sick for decades hence.
July 4, 2010 at 11:31 am
Simon
Remember Italy – Australia four years ago? People were raging for the opposite reason — the penalty was successful, but the foul was cheap. Do you really think awarding presumed goals based on the intent of the handball would never be controversial?
July 5, 2010 at 4:15 am
chris y
The idea of amending the rules to give a penalty goal in this sort of situation does in fact have a precedent in rugby (both codes), where a penalty try can be given if the officials think foul play has prevented a legitimate try. Whether this approach could be adopted in football is open to debate at the moment. Currently, tactics like Suarez’ are fairly rare, but if they started becoming commonplace, I could imagine a movement to change the law.
July 5, 2010 at 6:01 am
Nick
The closest example that I think you can get here is that in in the 1954 Cotton Bowl (a postseason game in American College football), Rice University was playing the University of Alabama. Rice’s tailback, Dicky Moegle, was on his way to a sure touchdown when one of Alabama’s bench players (Tommy Lewis) came running off of the sideline and onto the field, tackling Moegle to prevent the touchdown. In this case, the referee awarded an automatic touchdown.
July 5, 2010 at 11:45 am
JP Stormcrow
when one of Alabama’s bench players (Tommy Lewis) came running off of the sideline and onto the field, tackling Moegle to prevent the touchdown.
In our family discussion of the hand ball, my eldest son (who refs soccer) tried to come up with what he thought would be the rule violation with the most “unfair” penalty. His choice was the unlikely scenario where a “team official” comes onto the field and kicks a ball away that is headed into the goal. The restart is a drop ball (if it is a substitute they do get an indirect free kick).
I am not much in favor of the awarded goal–this instance was exacerbated by being at the absolute end of the match. In general, the PK plus red card is a pretty stiff penalty (but gets “less stiff” as the game goes on), especially given the gray area on what constitutes a handball (although this instance was not gray), for instance compare Australia vs. Ghana 2010 (called) and USA vs. Germany 2002 (not called).
July 5, 2010 at 10:43 pm
andrew
(Hack-a-shaq did prompt a few official considerations of a rules change, but there the problem was the game was no fun to watch, more than an action that was poor form or whatever.)
True, but as the Hack-a-shaq wikipedia entry shows, there already had been a rule change because of a similar strategy being employed against Wilt Chamberlain. That rule already deterred the use of Hack-a-shaq strategies in the last two minutes. Also, I remember it being considered a problem of both poor form and unwatchableness. Since it didn’t actually work, the poor form aspect was muted, as there was no clear advantage taken.
I think chris y is right that if intentional handballs become common, then there might be a move to amend the rule. But as they’re rare, and as missing an in-competition penalty (as opposed to a shootout penalty) is also quite rare – I think in World Cups something like 90+% of in competition penalties have resulted in goals in recent years – and as the straight red card is actually a strong individual punishment, it really doesn’t seem like there’s much of a need, yet, to change the rule. The example of the Paraguay player can serve both as an example of a lack of culture of handballs and as an example of a lack of need to do more to deter handballs as the measures taken to deter them in both formal and informal rules apparently remain quite strong. You see very few defenders put their hands up.
I might think differently if I didn’t also think that had Ghana won on the penalty, which is the much more common outcome in these situations, there would be fewer conversations going on about intentional rule violations right now, and they’d be more muted. As far as famous unfair handballs go, I have to say that this one seems the most “legitimate” within the structure of the game that was played: there’s no argument that a rule went unenforced as it’s currently written (unlike Maradona, etc. scoring with handballs, or defenders not getting called at all for handling the ball in the penalty area).
July 6, 2010 at 9:54 am
chris
You care so much about victory, and not football, that you would change the game so that now a goal comes from getting the ball in the net, AND hitting a flapping hand in front of the goal.
You could easily avoid this by, in the specific case of intentional handballs in the goal, allowing the penalty kick to be taken against an empty net. Presumably missing THAT would be all but impossible (since there is no need to aim for corners as the players do when penalty kicking against a goaltender), thus making it an adequate deterrent to intentional handball, but the ball would still go into the net for people who insist that a goal cannot simply be given away.
In general, though, a red card loses its sting if it comes late enough in the game and that’s something that might need to be looked at. Maybe a rule extending the game so that at least 5 (or even 10) minutes must pass after a red card is awarded, to give the other team a substantial chance to score from their man advantage? Ghana might or might not have done so, but they would have had a fighting chance rather than have the red card be a nearly dead issue simply because of the timing.
As it stands, a foul committed early in the game is effectively punished far more severely than one committed late, with the predictable consequence of more late fouls.
As far as famous unfair handballs go, I have to say that this one seems the most “legitimate” within the structure of the game that was played: there’s no argument that a rule went unenforced as it’s currently written
That’s what makes it so problematic, IMO. Everyone agrees that bad calls fall on the just and on the unjust, and the rules aren’t to blame for human failure to enforce them. But the rules as they presently exist don’t even seem to have a way of dealing with this particular play, even if they are enforced properly. One penalty kick is always going to be more uncertain than the last-minute goal you are blocking.
July 7, 2010 at 3:18 am
simon
Just curious, would this discussion exist if Ghana had made their penalty kick? Because everything you’ve said about the incentives of the red card would still be true, but no one would care. That’s why I think the people who want to change the rule are trying to legislate an outcome, not the game of football.
As for the proposal that the penalty kick go into an empty net, if it’s meant seriously, it suggests that I’m wasting my time arguing with you.
July 7, 2010 at 12:25 pm
chris
That’s why I think the people who want to change the rule are trying to legislate an outcome, not the game of football.
Well, sure: they want to legislate an outcome in which players don’t commit intentional handballs because the consequences of doing so are *uniformly*, not merely occasionally, worse than the consequences of not doing so.
Obviously a rule change now isn’t going to go back in time and restore Ghana to the tournament. Whether anyone would care if the kick had been made is a more difficult question, but I think the intentional handball is flagrant enough that it would get attention even if it happened to not be game-deciding in that particular instance. Ordinary penalty kicks are far from guaranteed and so the potential for the situation to recur and the fouling team to get lucky would be obvious.
I don’t see why you apparently want to give the fouling team (in general, not Uruguay in particular, since we’re discussing a change to rules in the future) a fighting chance to avoid the consequences of their own behavior (i.e. refusing to simply award goals, or to allow a kick under circumstances effectively tantamount to a guaranteed goal). After all, they could have kept the ball out of the penalty box, or had their goalkeeper in position to block it with *his* hands, etc… by the time they’re committing an intentional handball they have already deserved to give up that goal, IMO (and conversely the team that had the shot on goal, not offsides, with the goalkeeper out of position, deserves to score it). Giving them yet another chance to dodge the bullet will just encourage them to reach for it.
If you *don’t* want the fouling team to have another chance to prevent the goal (which I don’t, because it screws up the incentives and people will behave accordingly), then one method of “giving” the goal is as good as another — unless you have some fundamental desire to see the ball hit the back of the net, which is what the empty-net proposal was for. I don’t really understand the resistance to awarding a goal that was only prevented by blatantly illegal behavior.
July 13, 2010 at 8:29 am
jroth95
allowing the penalty kick to be taken against an empty net
Or, karmically better, make the handballer defend the goal, with no change of equipment. I assume that the average striker would score nearly every time, and the handballer gets to decide how much pain he’s willing to risk the second time he defends the goal.